Part of the problem is that there is a small, very active group of people who actually do embody the "go away n00b" mindset simply because they are starved for good, "expert" questions.

This is made even more severe by the dogpiling of negative votes. A good example of this is the question How can I implement gravity?. If you don't have enough rep to see it, that particular question has 4 downvotes (most likely people who think the question is too simple and easy to look up) and 4 upvotes (people who think it's a reasonable question, and potentially who think that the downvotes were not warranted). Sure, it's a decidedly easy question, but 4 downvotes? And no comment as to why? Two "Not a real question" close votes?

Sometimes I feel like it might be better to intervene early with the frame of reference of a moderator than let the question get dogpiled by the community. I usually don't, though.

Like I said in chat, I fully expected that example question you gave to go negative early, even though there are potentially good answers to give, particularly if you take it from the less-naively-worded "how can I be effective at making a game with very limited resources". Granted, the op could've better explained what their goals were. For example, getting something up and running quickly would be the assumed purpose of the question, but if their goal was to start at the bottom and work their way up the technology chain, giving them examples of middleware to use wouldn't be very helpful.

Part of the problem is that there is a small, very active group of people who actually do embody the "go away n00b" mindset simply because they are starved for good, "expert" questions.

This is made even more severe by the dogpiling of negative votes. A good example of this is the question How can I implement gravity?. If you don't have enough rep to see it, that particular question has 4 downvotes (most likely people who think the question is too simple and easy to look up) and 4 upvotes (people who think it's a reasonable question, and potentially who think that the downvotes were not warranted). Sure, it's a decidedly easy question, but 4 downvotes? And no comment as to why? Two "Not a real question" close votes?

Sometimes I feel like it might be better to intervene early with the frame of reference of a moderator than let the question get dogpiled by the community. I usually don't, though.

Like I said in chat, I fully expected that example question you gave to go negative early, even though there are potentially good answers to give, particularly if you take it from the less-naively-worded "how can I be effective at making a game with very limited resources". Granted, the op could've better explained what their goals were. For example, getting something up and running quickly would be the assumed purpose of the question, but if their goal was to start at the bottom and work their way up the technology chain, giving them examples of middleware to use wouldn't be very helpful.